Catholics, Abortion, and Health Care Reform
Jesse
Nov 16, 2009
Senate Democrats will presumably get their act together and bring a health care bill to a vote someday. Whether the Senate bill includes some form of a public option is not the only issue that may cause the bill to fail. The question of whether it will include a prohibition against spending federal funds on abortion, as the House bill does, may turn out to be the critical issue.
The principal voice on abortion being heard in Congress these days is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Certainly they aren’t the only abortion opponents, religious and otherwise, who are concerned that any health care reform bill include a ban on abortion funding. And they aren’t the only Catholic voice. Individual priests and bishops are also speaking out, encouraging Catholics to communicate their views on abortion to members of Congress.
Here’s the position of the USCCB:
On November 7, the U.S. House of Representatives passed major health care reform that reaffirms the essential, longstanding and widely supported policy against using federal funds for elective abortion coverage.
It is critical that the Senate adopt the House-approved Stupak Amendment language on this issue. This Amendment ensures that Americans are not forced to pay for the destruction of unborn children as part of needed health care reform.
The Senate must address other essential moral priorities: protecting conscience rights; making health coverage more affordable and accessible for those in need; and ensuring that immigrants do not lose or will not be denied health care coverage needed for the good of their families and the health of society.
The politicians are listening, to the point that the Democratic leadership in the House permitted an amendment to prohibit spending on abortion to be included in their bill. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have passed it because of the opposition of Republicans and moderate Democrats. The Senate faces the same problem.
However, if the final bill produced from an eventual House-Senate conference includes the ban, strong abortion rights supporters may vote it down in one or both houses. If it doesn’t include the ban, member who oppose abortion may vote it down. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
This is a serious problem for Democrats, partly because of the personal beliefs of some and partly because a significant loss of support among Catholics could spell disaster in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
I can’t help but be a bit amused by the whole thing. Democrats have long gotten away with being “cafeteria Catholics,” picking and choosing among the Church’s basic beliefs, often for purely political reasons.
On the abortion issue in particular, despite grumblings from the Church, Democrats have adopted absurdly contradictory stances. The best example might be John Kerry, a hypocrite in many ways, who said when running for president that he believes life begins at conception and that he is pro-choice. That means that he (and others like him) support murder — there’s no way out of it.
Finally, the Catholic Church is calling them to account. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
For additional information: Dems may lose Catholics over abortion, Politico
(This article was also published at Opinion Forum.)
You really make it seem so easy with your presentation however I to find this topic to be actually something which I believe I’d by no means understand. It seems too complex and extremely broad for me. I’m taking a look forward for your next post, I will try to get the dangle of it!
Let me see….if I count up all the suggestions by *anyone* conservative or not of the suggested laws prohibiting abortion in the cases of rape or incest, I get…Oh! look! ZERO!!! politics hater is running up that old tattered flag, missing the point of the post which is Taxpayer funding of ELECTIVE abortions.
It seems hater can’t read. Maybe it is his blind rage that blurs the words….
I would like to see one of these f*****s look the father of a rape victim in the eye and tell him that it’s tough s**t but his daughter is going to be forced to bear the child of the man who raped her.
I personally guarantee the f****r would be in bloody chunks spread all over the walls.
I say this from a father’s point of view, as I obviously can’t say it from the females point. One thing for the shitheads to consider is this, if they make all abortions illegal, the first item to consider is the fact that from a rape victims viewpoint is that I would imagine that those who refuse her right to an abortion would only increase the mental damage to the victim, the second item to consider is the fact that you would end up with a return to the bad old days of the back street abortionists and the increase in suicides, deliberate misscarriages, infant deaths and doorstep babies(mind you the doorstep ones will probably make the churches happy, it would mean more kids to brainwash and abuse). At the end of it all the will just be more suffering, etc.
One thing more, try forcing an antiquated doctrine on my daughter and you had better be able to run very, very fast.